NYtimes ran an interesting article on Bill Gates' push for education reform in support of academic excellence. 

As always there is no money to support.  The article noted that the annual budget for public school education is $500b of which $50b is earmarked for seniority pay while another $10b is set aside to reward those with a master’s degree.  At first glance, that is a fair amount of spending but when you run it against the number of teachers in the system it is actually very small. 

Gates has suggested that we scrap comp based on years of service and / or how many degrees one has as those incentives are not directly tied to driving academic excellence.  I think we’d all agree with this one.  The more controversial suggestion of moving to larger classes is really a way to take the existing pie and come up with larger slices that drive a desired set of outcomes.  If we continue to move towards smaller classes the financial incentives become even smaller to where they will be meaningless if not insulting. 

When it comes to education, we’re behind other nations and that gap continues to grow.  Will his suggestions work?  No idea.  But I think we should be willing to try and test it along with others and see what comes of them.  What we’re doing today just isn’t working. 

Personally, I think if we really want to drive change we need to find a way to get parents more involved in their child’s education.  May be the next push should be for a tax cut based on your child’s academic performance?  Teachers are incredible but there is only so much that can be expected from them...parents also have to step up and assume greater responsibility.

Maheshi and I at a friend's wedding